Climate Fiction(s) #3

Série de séminaires de l'axe transversal "Création culturelle et territoire(s)" autour de la notion de "Climate Fiction(s)".

Ce séminaire est le troisième d'une série de séminaires de l'axe transversal « Création culturelle et territoire(s) » de l'ILCEA4 intitulée "Climate Fiction(s)" qui a pour but d'explorer différents types de fictions climatiques, à la fois dans la littérature et dans les arts visuels, d'un point de vue anglophone. Ce séminaire est associé à la journée d'étude "Thinking, communicating and translating metaphors in controversial science" qui aura lieu la veille du séminaire et s'insère dans la manifestation scientifique "Communicating science through metaphors and narratives".

Pour ce troisième séminaire de la série "Climate Fiction(s)" est invitée Dr Marion Moussier, spécialiste de littérature britannique, dont la communication est intitulée : "The World of Science in Climate Fictions: Ambivalent Representations, Public Perception and Risk Communication".

Seminar abstract:

Climate fictions, novels that make climate change their central theme, are quintessential expressions of the timeless dialogue between literature and science. Taking three examples from British climate fictions, from Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods (2007) to Liz Jensen’s The Rapture (2009) and Ian McEwan’s Solar (2010), this seminar will explore the literary representations of scientists and scientific institutions they provide and what they reveal about the public perception of climate change in western societies. Throughout British literary production, one notices an ambivalence at the core of the perception of science in the crisis, simultaneously represented as a vector of destruction, a praised symbol of progress and a neglected warning voice. This seminar will consider how these three novels suggest science’s societal applications are treated, most notably in relation to its unprecedented entanglement with and dependence on politics. Present-day or near future novels such as Solar and The Rapture often make the general state of controversy a defining element of the historical context they are set in, and, through the voices and experiences of scientist protagonists, express topical ideas such as the ever-increasing politicisation of science, the role of the media in spreading scepticism, and the misrepresentation of climate scientists these trends entail. These novels’ engagement with climate science also expands to the question of the communication and perception of environmental risks in the public sphere. They address some of the complex mechanisms at work in the reception of climate change data, and provide a better understanding of why the most popular methods of scientific communication may elicit various degrees of resistance. Eventually, this seminar will discuss how climate fictions illustrate the complex questions and challenges at stake in the communication and reception of environmental risks through the medium of their protagonists often acting as proxies for the readers.

Biography:

Marion Moussier has recently completed her Ph.D in English literature at the University Paul Valéry Montpellier 3 in the research unit Études Montpelliéraines du Monde Anglophone (EMMA, EA 741) with a dissertation entitled Representations of Climate Change in the Contemporary British Novel: From Scientific Speculations to Human Experiences. She worked as a temporary lecturer at the Université Paul Valéry for several years before moving to Norway where she is living now. Her research investigates the multiple interactions between cultural narratives, literary conventions, scientific rationality and the potential of raising environmental awareness, as crystallised in climate fictions. Her current research interests revolve around environmental risk perception and communication, climate change rhetoric and the didactic function of literature. Her latest publications include “A Dissonant Mind in a Dissonant Body: Allegories of Climate Change Denial in McEwanʼs Novel Solar (2010)” for Études Britanniques Contemporaines and the upcoming “Voir le Présent Comme Histoire : La Fonction Didactique du Futur Antérieur dans les Romans sur le Changement Climatique” for the journal Cahiers d’Études du Religieux.